Question

The sum of 4 consecutive integers is -18. what is the greatest of these integers?

Answer 1

Okay. What I know so far is that the integers will all be negative. We don't have to count too high to do this. So for this, it's like pick any four numbers. Or you could divide 18 by half and find the addition problems that you know would equal 9. What I see is that -3 + -4 + -5 + -6 = -18. There are all four consecutive integers. The trend is that you can draw a line tracing to the number of the opposite side of the question and you can see they each equal nine. Most people would be tricked and say 6, because they ignore the negative symbol, but here's the catch. The lower the number in front of the negative sign, the greater it is. So in this case, the lowest number in front of the negative symbol is 3, which would also mean that -3 is the highest when it comes to all of these numbers. So -3 is the greatest out of the four consecutive integers.